Yellow Flower and Ink

Yellow Flower and Ink was part of a series of paintings I did in the summer of 2004 shortly after I finished my PhD in London Ontario. The idea was to sell them at art shows in the park but that didn't go so well, although I found a dime on the sidewalk on the way back from an art show, so I can say that I made a dime at least! The painting was done completely from imagination, though at the beginning of my painting career (1989 until early 90's) I did paint a lot of florals, so I kind of knew how to depict a flower.

Around this time I was experimenting with Chinese black ink, which I had obtained while taking lessons at the Chinese art and calligraphy group in London Ontario. The ink outlines you see were actually applied last... in other words, I did the flower scene using conventional old English-style techniques which do not use black or white, and then when it was dry, applied the ink outlines over top. The white star-burst patterns were created by throwing salt in the wet watercolour, or by dropping on a bead of clean water at the precise moment to create a controlled backwash.

5x7" cold press. 2004

L’Assemblée nationale, Québec City, Canada

A political painting if there ever was one, this was done in Quebec City in the scorching heat of a summer weekend. In front of the National Assembly protestors had erected six flags, including the provincial flag, Canadian flag, two separatist flags, a black flag, and a red flag. The first two (provincial and Canadian) were flying upside down. The provincial flag was flying at half mast to acknowledge the train disaster of last week. The red flag represents the student protest movement, and the black flag is, well I don't know. So out of all these mixed messages I did not appreciate seeing the Canadian flag upside down, whatever a groups beliefs I really think that was wrong. So to correct the situation I did this painting, notice the Canadian flag, second from the left, is right-side up. That is what you call judicious use of the Artistic License. Incidentally, the whole display- which included some sharp political messages- was taken down by the time I left.

11x7.5 cold press. July 2013

River Park Kyoto, Japan

Awhile ago I went to Japan for a conference and had the chance to visit Kyoto afterwards. I rented a bike and rode it all the way to the south part of the city where there was a very large park next to a river. It started to rain so I sat under a tree and made this painting. The rain hit the paper making a rain-like effect which was rather convenient.

Monet would often dangle a tree limb from the top of the canvas in his compositions. Over the years I have borrowed that trick, here you see two branches hanging from the top of the page. There is no tree trunk visible, but you still get the feeling of being under trees. This painting is also a good example of controlled backwash... I mentioned that a few blogs ago in the painting called 'In Sequence'. Here I used the technique to create the field of grass in the center. I also used it to create the trees off in the distance.

5x7" cold press. 2006 (No. 1213)

Mount Orford Park, Quebec

Here is a small landscape I did on location at Mount Orford Park, just one hour east of Montreal. It was done early in the morning, the low clouds were floating atop the mountain in the background. The scene was tough to find, when you are surrounded by trees the sight lines are blocked, so basically, you end up painting the trees. There is a nice relaxed quality to this painting, you get that camping vibe. It is hard to see, but there is a tiny orange construction cone near the lane way. Construction cones and garbage cans are signature features of many Darlington landscapes!

Painting trees is always difficult. The temptation for the amateur painter is to try and paint every leaf but this quickly becomes a hopeless task, especially in the forest. The better strategy is to try and 'represent' the leaves. In this painting, I represented the leaves by first doing a wet-in-wet wash. To do this, lightly moisten the paper with some clean water, then paint the shape of the trees using a medium green-orange or green-blue mix. When that starts to dry, add some darker versions of the base colour by adding some red and blue. Let this dry... it will look like an out of focus green blob at this stage. Then, drag some dark green paint over top of the 'blob' to give texture. Use the brush sideways and gently drag across in random directions. The texture gives the illusion of leaves, and the underlay gives the volume of the tree. This will take some practice to get the wetness correct on each layer, and judge the colours and values properly.

11x7.5" cold press July 2013.

In Sequence, B Side

Rarely do I paint on the back of another painting, on advice of my mother who realized that you may want to sell a painting one day and couldn't separate the back from the front. This painting was done on the B side of 'Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)'. I really didn't think Perpetual Load Theory was going to work out, and in fact abandoned the work by taking it off the stretching rack. At the same time I found a missing note-book in a drawer which had doodles done between 2011-2012. These doodles were earlier than the ones I had been using, and I wanted to keep things in chronological order, hence the name of the painting. The title also refers to the DNA strands that are saving (or drowning?) the character in the middle foreground- all DNA has a series of molecules, the 'sequence' of which determines life. After some time I realized that Perpetual Load Theory was actually ok, and finished it too (previous post).

Another first for this painting was the underwater scene in the front. I made the effect by copying the doodles from my notebooks using a squiggly line technique... just shake your hand a little as you draw. Then I filled in base colours using pale washes, and after drying, I overlaid the blue green water. Finally I put on the darker blue smears to create the light/shadow of waves. It seemed to work out pretty good- click on the painting to see an enlarged view.

There is also a very experimental technique in this work... you see the pillar of yellow fire in the top middle background emanating from what looks like a flower vase? That was done using a triple backwash technique. A backwash is when a wet layer of paint bleeds into a medium-dry layer of paint, creating a fuzzy jagged edge. Typically backwashes happen by accident in watercolour where you least want them, but over the years I learned to control them. To make the pillar of fire, I laid down the neutral blue sky, and when it was about half dry I dropped down a moist layer of yellow... when that was half dry, I dropped down a moist layer of yellow-orange on the yellow layer...when that was half dry I dropped down a moist layer of red-orange.The element is fairly unimportant in the overall scheme, but maybe I'll use this technique in the future.

22x30" cold press (B side) June 2013

Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)

The 2010 solution finally has a question. Let me explain... in 2010 I painted "The 2010 Solution" ... a pivotal work that established a fusion between the Dali-like landscape style and Doodleism. That painting featured a funny looking monster sitting in desert smoking. In this work, a woman sits cross legged in a desert, though her health habits are much better since she doesn't smoke. In fact she doesn't even have arms to smoke if she wanted to. On the top left, a funny object on the horizon echo's Dali. I really like the camouflage sky creature at the top. Perpetual Load theory refers to the time in my life (2012) when these doodles were made... I was just over my first year being a professor and the work never seemed to end!

 Recently I have been thinking about how to make the pictures a little more 'classic' in their look. The old academic paintings, impressionism, and post impressionism all have a similar 'museum quality' to them. It seems to be based on plenty of value contrast- in other words light lights and dark darks... and saturated (bright) colours. Shaped are simple and compositions are unified. The sense of space is also clear, even in Dali, you can tell where the ground is, where the sky is etc. My work typically does not have the bright colours and value contrast,  namely because I use the old english method in watercolour, which does not use white or black paint. Watercolour also dries a little duller than oils. I also create a fragmented space... horizons don't align, there are multiple landscape perspectives, even different times of day are depicted in the same work. Anyways, I don't want to change my style just to look like the impressionists or whatever, but as an artist you should always be stretching yourself into non-comfort zones. I'll keep tweaking a little and see what happens.

22x30" cold press. June 2013

The Few

This is a painting I did a few years ago based on a doodle. The inspiration was based on the field of science...and in particular scientific funding... basically it says that only a few scientists (The Few) get financial support from the government. The support as it were is no more than an eaten apple. The scientists are worms and only a few get the apple scraps. The rest of the scientists -without funding- are writhing in a big pit of despair. Usually an artist is not supposed to tell their secrets, but to my (small but faithful) blog audience the rules don't have to apply!

The most time consuming part of this work was the worms. For a mere 5x7" painting it took inordinate amounts of time. I tried to put more detail in the worms near the foreground, and then do more abstract realization towards the background. You will also see that the colour of the worms is brighter and more red in the front, and fades to a more lilac towards the back to create the illusion of depth.

5x7" cold press, 2009?